


Jane D.O.A.

by flailswildly



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen, Urban Fantasy, Vampires, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 12:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2110254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flailswildly/pseuds/flailswildly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vampires, fey, and magi have to obey very strict rules when playing in the real world and the Agency is the heavy hand the enforces those rules. Too bad more often than not they don't feel those rules should have to apply to them, so sometimes the Agency needs to bring down the hammer. That hammer has a name, it's Jane, and even though she is technically dead she really fucking hates her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jane D.O.A.

**Author's Note:**

> This is not beta'd so my apologies for any egregious grammar or spelling issues.

 

 

I miss pain.

It's funny, the things you miss the most when they go away for good. I mean, yeah sure, there are the obvious ones. Food, sex, dreaming, being warm. But it's also the little things you miss: stuff that if someone asked you if you'd miss them you’d think they were fucking nuts. Like going to the bathroom. And itching, itching was good, and of course: pain. That one hundred percent pure suck reminder that you’re still alive. Then again that may just be the big problem right there, as alive is something I'm not. At least not anymore.

Not that I'm dead either. Well technically I guess I am, what with the whole not breathing and no heartbeat thing. It's the whole laying down and never getting up again bit I haven't quite got down. I'm also not, I reiterate not, a vampire. Actually, what with the feeding and the sex and all the other bits, they’re far more alive than I'll ever be. Weird to think that I almost envy those blood dependent pan-sexual freak shows.

Almost.

What I am, there’s not really name for. The closest answer I've ever found is something called a Reverent, or you basic animated corpse if you want the remedial answer, except for the fact that I'm not rotting and still have most of my faculties intact. Also, I pack way more power than any of those poor lost souls could ever dream of. Professionally I like to consider myself a standard issue requisite really big gun but Adain, my handler, thinks that lacks dignity. Or at least he says it lacks dignity. Personally I think he gets a kick out of my lack of concern for the usual required protocols. I wish I could say my attitude comes from being dead and not so much loving it, but my therapist is of the opinion that it’s my inherent state, pulse or no pulse, and she’s the one with several degrees on her wall so I guess she’d know.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah pain. I miss it, and while as a being currently subject to a pain filled existence you probably won't believe me on this one, but it comes in useful at times. Like when, say, you go for your gun only to realize that two of your fingers have been blown off.

"Fuck! Seriously?"

Really? Really? Damn it! Where the hell did I lose them? I shoot a panicked look around my current location, ducked behind a Honda Civic getting turned into Swiss cheese by the gun wielding dark fey located across the parking lot. And can I just say? It is really going to suck for whoever decided to park their car in the mall parking lot while off on their date.

Nope, no fingers. Crap! That means they are next to "the package" which is currently surrounded by aforementioned dark fey. Fuck me sideways. I take a quick peak and yep sure enough there's the package, the o so shinny and silver Halliburton briefcase that’s the cause of this mess, and there are my fingers on the handle. Pinkie and index, the traitorous bastards. Shit.

I can fire with my left if I have to, and I’m not too bad at close range, but this is not that and I don’t have the ammo to waste. Okay-I really did not want to have to do this, but fuck it. Adain may prefer when I handle these things delicate-like, not as the blunt instrument the universe has turned me into, but in situations like this? Namely outnumbered, with no back up and missing your fucking fingers? Well, you gotta go with your strengths. Sometimes that means literally. I drop my gun since without the fingers it’s pretty useless at this point. Crouching down nest to the poor abused Civic and I get a good grip on the under carriage. Then, with an ease that still surprises me after five fucking years, I stand up and take the car with me .

Yeah, sometimes I kinda rock.

I hear the cries of shock from the bad guys as they panic at my display of total awesome. Not that they aren't used to this sort of thing, most of the beings from their side of the fence are more than capable of putting on a show when they want to. No it’s that out and about we all play by a very specific set of rules and I just broke a big one. Right up there with not eating babies. Not that I would, you know, eat babies. It's just one of the rules.

Where was I? Oh yeah. The panicking.

I smell smoke as the boys channel their panic in the appropriate manner, mainly gunfire. I can feel the impact of the bullets as they rip through me but not the pain that would normally accompany the blunt force trauma and tissue damage. My pain receptors did not come alone for the ride when I ended up dead. And if you think I'm going say something along the lines of ‘it comes in handy at times to be an unfeeling, Undead, killing machine‘, well dude you don't get it and probably never will.

I don't even grunt as I hurl the car a good twenty feet at where my would be assassins are amassed near the package currently under dispute. Not that I take the time to admire the throw, I'm moving as soon as the car is out of my hands. With a speed that is utterly and completely unnatural, I sprint across the space between me and them in seconds. I get there before the car but not by much, the deafening crash it makes as it collides with the pavement distracting the boys long enough for me to inflict a little carnage of my own.

Moving fast I take out two of the fourteen before thier hyper non human reflexes catch up and am grateful for the shock doing a nasty number on their reaction time, I am fast but when they aren't shitting themselves in terror dark fey are faster. I snapping the firsts neck and using the gun still in his hand to kill the guy next to him. Next one I take down with a roundhouse kick that caves his chest in, which is good except that it gives his buddy time to start emptying an entire clip into my chest. Dude ruins my coat in the process, he’s so going to pay for that.

I walk up to him even as he keeps firing, working my Superman moment as best I can with bits of skin hanging off me and my clothing torn to shit by the bullets. His eyes widen in fear as he finally runs out of ammo and I have to wonder at whatever he’s seeing. Crap, I bet organs are showing. Say what you will about the price of badassery, but that's always sort of embarrassing, being all opened up like that. A girl can’t help but feel exposed when people can see her spleen. Fey Boy finally runs out of ammo, but he doesn't have much time to soil himself before I backhand him ten feet into one of the predictably black SUVs they showed up in. He leaves a dent and doesn't get back up.

Four down.

Turning, I glare at the remaining ten and they all take a big step back, not quite sure how to proceed and honestly? I can’t say that I blame them. Not that I care since I've reached my objective and am now standing over the package and, more importantly, my fingers. I can feel the hunk of skin hanging off the left side of my face as it brushes my lips. It's probably a good sized piece and I wonder what they see where it should be. No blood obviously, as I don't really bleed- it's more like a slow seep, but muscle, bone, the sides of my teeth, that sort of thing. My life’s a fricking horror movie, only without a kick ass soundtrack.

"So boys." It’s my best professional killing machine voice, the one that Adain makes me practice because I usually sound more like a babbling idiot on a runaway locomotive to tangent town. Taking his advice, I keep it simple. "How do you want to play this?"

Okay, yes I know. It sounds like dialog from a bad TV show or an action movie circa 1986, but it was also calm and cold and that's all that really matters. Tone, inflection, Adain is obsessed with these things.

"What are you?" One of them asks, drowning in his obvious incomprehension because whoever briefed these guys before they left Neverland did a really crap job of it. I could enlighten the guy but that would take six hours and a power point presentation so I just smile as I happily reach down and reclaim my fingers. Hi guys! You miss me? 

With an ease that I never thought I'd ever have I calmly bring them to the severed stumps where they used to fill out the rest of my hand. Using a bit on the energy left over from the deaths I just effortlessly dealt out I repair the wounds and reattach the runaways. I can do that, steal life to fix myself. Or maybe it’s death I’m feeding off, no ones really clear on that, not even me. Whatever the case it comes in handy some days. Oh who am I kidding, with my line of work it comes in handy most days, usually the ones that end in y. I don’t really feel anything as the dead flesh bonds with the digits, maybe a slight tingle. Or not, it’s not like I have a frame of reference for these things. Once the fingers are back on I flex my hand and listen to the really loud pops my knuckles make as the bones settle back into place. It used to turn my stomach, at least metaphorically, but now I think it's kind of cool. My audience is not as amused.

Interesting fun fact. When the Undying are confronted by the Undead they usually react in one of two ways. With most living things, the most common response when confronted with the kind of fear inspired death up, walking, and lamely attempting cool guy banter is to run away from it as fast as you possibly can. Your feet usually end up moving you in a direction that is not there and have you half way to Albuquerque before you even make the decision that running from the monster might be a good thing. Now imagine if you will that you are a beings whose entire existence is defined by their immortality. Death as a concept would make about as much sense to your frame of reference as thirst does to a goldfish. The idea of the walking dead is not only utterly alien to the Undying it is an anathema, the anti them. I mean imagine if you would, what it’s like for someone who with a little luck will never die when they run face first into fucking death incarnate. Yeah, you'd wet your pants too.

So that would be flight. The other response is fight and something tells me these guys don't have enough imagination between them to be smart about this. As we eye each other across the asphalt- me standing over the silver Halliburton briefcase that was the cause of this stupid mess, riddled with bullet wounds that don't bleed, and trying to project just how much I want this whole cluster fuck to be done and them- huddled in a uncertain clump in front of the three black SUV's that brought them to the party trying to remember that as far as they are concerned they are the master race and I am an insect that just refuses to die.

They have not moved except to suck in a few sharp breaths and I can already see they direction they are going to jump. Slowly I strip off the remains of my black leather trench coat and toss it aside with a flicker of regret. I really liked that coat I choke back a sad sigh. Pining over destroyed outerwear tends to ruin the Undead killing machine vibe I was attempting to rocking to the best of my ability. Reaching behind me I grab the hilt of the blade nestled in the rune-etched sheath I wear at my lower back underneath my black turtle neck, also ruined via high velocity projectiles. My work wardrobe was seriously taking a beating tonight.

With the flick of my thumb I release the catch holding the bade in place and as the dull gray metal is released from its confinement the air temperature of the already chilly late October night drops another ten degrees. The electric lights illuminating the parking lot where we'd chosen to have this little get together begin to flicker sullenly, science meeting old school magic and getting its ass kicked. They put up a ten second long fight before crying uncle and gradually dimming until the only illumination left is the full moon over our heads. Not that the boys notice, they're too busy working themselves into a nice macho rage. I can see it in their eyes as we take each others measure in the cold mist that has sprung up from literally nowhere, slithering in between the cracks of this world and the other side, to envelope the lot.

The tension is palpable and I know it's only going to be only seconds before it breaks. I'd take a deep calming breath if it would do any good. One. Two. Three.

I never make it to four. Just as predicted the lead douche bag raises his sub machine gun, ready to pump my fragile form with still more hot lead fury. Time seems to slow as he opens his mouth to say something pithy, probably along the lines of "Die Bitch", that one is really popular,  and that's when I move. The Knife is out of my hands and embedded in his forehead before he can even draw breath to begin his insult. I don't think his guys even notice what's happened until he drops to his knees and slumps over to the side. I do know that they feel the after effects of it however.

There is a slow pulse of necrotic energy that flares as the Knife feeds, I told by those still living that it feels like hungry is sucking them in, like little bits of themselves are being torn off and devoured by a metaphysical black hole. I think that's what breaks them as much as anything else, even more so than the head douche bag's demise. With as short a leash the Winter Court likes to keep its boys on, this is about as close to death as they've ever come. What must it be like as it claws at their nervous systems, raking its nails across their heightened senses, reaching deep inside to brush cold finger tips across their immortal souls? Probably not fun. And that would be when they break.

They move with the preternatural speed and grace that they all possess to one degree or another, scrambling around and body checking each other like a deadly Three Stooges reenactment as they cram themselves into their SUVs and haul ass out of the parking lot. The smell of burning rubber fills the air as they do everything in thier power to get as far away as possible from the scary bad thing. I absently wonder if they are headed for Albuquerque before I blankly survey the disaster area around me, their dead abandoned like so much refuse. I blink again and go back to just watching them go feeling utterly detached from them or anything else for that matter. So I scare the scary guys, nothing new there.

It’s a relief to watch them go, they were too much to deal with. Too much life, too bright, too hot, all around me with thier breathing and sweating. The cold that comes with death is better, cleaner, it makes sense in a world where so little else does. All the running around and screaming, the frantic heart beat of life that fill the world with its incessant cacophony is just a distraction from its truth. In the end all that really matters is the end itself, everything else is completely besides the point. Death is the one road all must walk eventually, even the Undying can only hide fro me for so long. I find everyone. 

I glance around again and wonder at my next move, where do I go from here? the world and all its brightness waits for me to being it peace. Somewhere in my head i feel a weird sort of twitch and I remember there is a protocol for this. I am not sure I remember why it is important but there are rules for when this happens that I have to obey. Stupid rules, but ones so ingrained that at this point there is no thought behind the obeying of them. It’s like programming, rote. Leaving the package, I pick up the tattered remains of my coat from where I’d tossed it what seems like an eternity ago. Reaching into my inner pocket I pull out my cell and before I set eyes on it I know it's trashed. My fingers trace over the broken plastic whatever the else cell phones are made of, I don’t know. Glass? Whatever it is beyond saving. Too many bullets.

Tossing aside the ruined phone I drop my coat and head over to the man who currently has possession of the Knife. I rifle through the pockets of his jacket, black and soft unlike any fabric found in the human world, and pull out his cell. It's an iPhone, which for some reason I don't understand amuses me, and dial the number appropriate for the situation. Shifting my limbs I sink down until I'm sitting on the ground beside my dead guy because I just don't have the energy to stand. Taking a moment I use my free hand to pull the Knife from his head. I don't sheath it, just clean it off and lay it down on the ground beside us. Gently I brush the silver blond hair out of his face as the phone on the other side of the line rings. The lavender blood on his forehead smears under my thumb and I am taken aback by the beauty of the contrast between it and his alabaster skin. 

"Adain." I say as soon as he picks up. "It got complicated."

He really does have a nice face, I think as I move my hand lower to run my thumb across his still lips, staining his lips purple with blood. Much nicer in death, without that bad boy attitude getting in the way of his elven beauty. It was actually quite a sweet face.

"I know." Adain's flat voice is pitched to be disruptive, breaking my moment as I contemplate of my pretty boy’s sweet face. "I’m on the way with the cleaners. What is the situation as it stands now?"

He is always so cold, so formal, all business, no play. Not like you, my sweet dead boy. "Five bodies, one mangled Civic, and more spent rounds then a demilitarized zone." I layout the matters at hand because those are the rules, sit rep is important though right now I can't remember why. There was something else i was supposed to do... Oh yes. That. I pause before I say this next bit, not because I'm afraid of Adain's response but because the way the light is reflecting off my sweet dead boy’s skin makes it glow. It would take my breath away if I had any left to give. "Oh and I drew the Knife."

Adain pauses on the other end of the line and I distantly recognize that he may have reason to be concerned.

"Have you sheathed it?" His voice is still and controlled, the calm he always gets when shit gets real. I know I should be concerned myself, after all that’s a pretty big no no I just pulled there, but all I have room for in my head is the sweet dead boy on the ground next to me and the temptation that had been growing in me ever since the Knife took him. It would be so easy, no effort at all really, one little push and a bit of the abundant death energy that had been spilled tonight and he would be mine. He could walk with me forever, a cold hand to hold in my own as the world cried and burned around us.

"Jane." Adains voice is sharp with some emotion that I can't identify. "Have you sheathed it?" God he’s so annoying.

"No."

"Do it. Do it now." I frown, ruffled by the order, but part of me somewhere a thousand miles bellow the surface knows this is important. Somehow I manage to pull my attention from my pretty, pretty boy and look around for the Knife. I is next to me, dull grey metal that seems to absorb what little light there was instead of reflecting it the way polished metal is supposed to. It looks harmless where lays on the pavement, simple hilt wrapped in back leather and a curiously clean blade. It never has blood on it, no matter what i do or who I kill it stays clean. I don't know why Adain is so insistent but I  do as he orders, five years of trained conditioned response guaranteeing my compliance. Dropping the phone I pick up the Knife from where I left it and slide it into the sheath strapped my lower back. I feel the universe shudder as I do, fighting me every step of the way, or maybe it’s really just me fighting myself. my hands shake as I force in the last few inches but I get it all the way in. Once it’s back in its home there’s one brief instant I'm tempted to pull it again, it's a familiar compulsion so I ride it out and just when it gets to be unbearable I feel the click and suddenly it's gone. It's done.The Knife is back where it belongs and I'm tired in a way only the Undead can be, worn out emotionally and riddled with bullets.

Oh and I'm groping a dead guy. Okay. . . That's new.

I glance at where the hand not occupied with the Knife is resting on the dead guy’s face, my thumb still caressing his full lips. Yeah, this is not good. Yanking my hand away I scrub it vigorously against the fabric of my pants, as if friction alone will remove the memory of what I wanted to do to a corpse. It's shit like this that is the reason why I'm in therapy. Before I can get pulled any further into the contemplation of my own grossness the cavalry pulls into the parking lot. Adain and his cleanup crew, finally. Took his sorry ass long enough.

Standing up abruptly I make my way over to where they've just parked, two SUV's and one lone unmarked grey van chock full of the mystical equivalent of white out. Adain emerges of the lead SUV and I have to smile at the picture he presents. Black pants, black turtle neck, black trench coat and while I don't have practical firsthand knowledge of it? I am pretty sure the underwear is black too. Dude could not be any more obvious if he tried.

"Jane." it's his signature remake. He says by way of greetings, inquiry, or admonishment, always in that calm voice of his.

There is never a ‘Jane, how are you?’, no ‘Jane, are you hurt?’ for me. Nope. Just my name, and clearly he has not worn it out yet. Not that I expect anything different. Adain his a creature of habit and niceties have been deemed unnecessary in my case. He knows that me being me I'm fine and if I'm not? Then my personal well being is the last thing he should be worrying about because there's probably an Apocalypse to deal with and you don;t want to know the amount of paper work that comes with that.

"Adain." I reply back with my best imitation, it's not as good as his but still it's close. See, I've learned a thing or two these last five years on the job.

It's night so he's not wearing his usual sunglasses, and in the combination of moonlight and street lights that has valiantly staged a comeback now that it no longer has to fight the magic of the Knife for its fair share of reality I can get a good look at his face. Huh. He’s amused, that is unexpected.

I can feel my own professional game face crack as I look up at him with a puzzled frown. What the hell is funny about this cluster fuck? Adain's amusement becomes even more apparent and he actually goes so far as to smile at my bafflement. I am just about to call a code Haley for doppelganger when he reaches up one strong, fine boned hand and pushes the flap of skin, that had been my left cheek and was currently dangling down my face, back into place.

"You might want to fix that," he informs me solemnly. Ah crap, I'll falling apart here. Talk about having your dignity take on in the ovaries.

"Oh right. Sort of forgot." I mutter, thanking the universe for the dubious gift of no longer being able to blush. Closing my eyes for the second time that night I reach out for the entropy spillover from the happy fun gun time and use it to repair myself. Not the bulk of the bullet holes currently perforating my organs, among other things, those are going to have to wait until the slugs are out before I fix them if I ever want to get through airport security again but the superficially scraps and random dangling bits that need to get fixed before we head in. I say repair and fix because that's what I do, what I don't do is heal. As a walking corpse that’s on the list of things I can never do again. Like eat chocolate or have sex. Yeah, I know. Sucks to be me.

What I can do is reset to my default, the exact state of my physical body the moment my heart stopped. It's a handy skill to have, though it does make it really hard for my bosses to resist throwing my ass into the meat grinder on a regular basis. Then again, they suck.

As my skin knits itself back together the nerves reconnect and I become aware of Adain's finger holding the flap of skin in place. I mean, not that I didn't know he was holding it there. The eyes do work. No, by aware I mean I can feel him, his skin on my skin. There was only a single point of contact where his finger tip meets my face but it’s more than enough. I may not feel pain but my nervous system does work in a weird way that is definitely non standard. No one has as yet to some up with any sort of explanation that does involve dead languages and cuneiform tablets from forbidden temples so I just call it dead girl magic and leave it at that.

I feel things like pressure and force, temperature changes and textual differentiation, my senses register things upon contact but it interprets the data through the filter of my condition. Normally it's a distant sort of awareness, muffled like am wrapped in a shroud, but it's a whole new set of rules when I come in close contact with the living and skin to skin is about as close as you can get. His touch burns like fire, the heat of his life a bright flare against the cold of my not life. It is like being brushed with a red hot poker without any pain, if that makes any sense,  just a heat that consumes all of my attention. My entire existence narrows to that point and through it I can feel his heart beat pounding into me, echoing though my empty halls, swallowing me up in its relentless tempo.

Then suddenly as it was there, it’s gone. I sway slightly at its absence, leaning toward its source, aching for its resonance. When I open the eyes that I had not even realized I had shut, my face is back to normal and his hand is back to where it spends most of its time, resting safely in the pocket of his trench coat. Looking up I dare some eye contact and he gives me an apologetic glance. He knows that I don't like being touched by the living and, more importantly, he knows why. So his sudden break of the rules with which we live by is an unexpected lapse on his part.

Anyone else, I would have just given them my dead girl zombie face, and believe me I have a good one, but this was Adain. So I do my best approximation of a smile and shrug, no harm done. Adain tries to cover our unexpectedly human moment by going all business on me. Go figure, maybe he should be the one in therapy, all that repression can’t be healthy. Me? I can get away with it since healthy is no longer really a concern, but Adain still has a pulse, so it should be. Then again, Adain really doesn't do the whole human frailty thing.

He looks around in a way that if you didn't know him would seem professional and detached and not at all embarrassed by his gaff, taking in the scene and looking anywhere but me. I’d call him on it, since I normally live for this shit, but I am feeling pretty fragile tonight so instead I play the game and follow his gaze with my own, taking in my carnage. Damn I'm good, my nana would be proud. At least I think she would, I don't actually remember her or anything else before I work up as death incarnate. It was a fun bonus to the whole dead thing, retrograde amnesia. I remember being alive, foggy memories of air in my lungs and what it felt like to stub a toe, it's just all the fun little details like an entire personal history that I lack. So since I can't remember anything, like at all, I make it up as I go along. I know it's kind of sad but hey, it works for me. I have mentioned I'm in therapy, right?

"Five years and you have as yet to master the art of subtly." This is old school Adain, handler talking to the asset, regaining lost ground.

"They had assault rifles, I had my Glock. What was I supposed to do, wait for them to pull out the grenade launcher?" And this is old school me, snark and attitude to spare. Okay so maybe that's new school me too, some of us aren’t that complicated.

"So five down including the guy you got with the Knife?" He coolly ignores my dig, ‘cause that's what old school Adain does.

"Yep."

"Did they at least have the forethought to raise a Veil?" 

"Yep. Did that as soon as they arrived. It wasn’t a ritual I recognized but seemed to work just fine. It dropped when they took off but it was there for the main event." Thank God the bully boys weren't complete and total idiots. Then again, I got the impression that they were acting on a high authority at the Dark Court. The way they conducted themselves for the first part of our little meet and greet, it was as if they were running down some sort of internal check list. Veil up? Check. Package assessed? Check. Inevitable betrayal? Check and double check. Though that said it should have been my first clue something was hinky, seeing as me delivering a briefcase really should not have required that level of mojo.

Then again you would have to be all sorts of stupid to try to accomplish anything with out raising a Veil, the ritual basically designed to keep people from seeing the shit that is really going down around them. Don't ask me how it works exactly, all I know is someone with the magical-type juice says a few words, burns some incense and, on occasion, kills a chicken-sometimes it’s a goat depending on the flavor of their mojo, and we're in business. What it’s supposed to do is pull one layer of reality over another, folding perception and veiling what you don’t want seen from prying eyes, hence the fabric related tag it goes by. Long story short it makes the seen unseen and all that other mumbo jumbo, sparkly rainbow, magic crap that adds up to invisible. It is sort of like a magical cloaking device, you parse my trek speak. So long as a Veil’s been raised I could perform a strip tease in the middle of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral at high mass and no one without the sight or a touch of the Other would ever know. Not that I would but I could, and I know what you're thinking. What about the whole holy ground thing we're always hearing about? Crosses and other religious icons affecting the Undead? Yeah that's pure fiction, at least as far as I'm concerned. Wrong paradigm. That's what happens when your connection predates Christianity by a good thousand years or so.

Vampires might be another story, I don't really know, I've never asked the ones I know and they are not the types to go into spontaneous share time. Anyways, back to my point, Veils are good. Only time you raise a Veil is when you don’t want to get caught with your hand in the cookie jar. I don't tell Adain my theory on the whole broader conspiracy right now, I'll save it for the debrief. Right now I just want to finish this up so I can head in, have the shrapnel removed from my ass and maybe take a shower. I’m dead but my sense of smell still works just fine when I remember to pay attention to it and believe you me, I’m becoming quite aware of the fact that I reek. Blood does that when you don't clean it up, funny how decomposition works. Mind you it's not my blood I'm worrying 'bout, just the excessive splatter I picked up from the Undying during the fight. Decomp's not really a problem for me these days.

"So the odds of the Untouched being contaminated?" Untouched. Official term for the rest of the population that remains blissfully ignorant of the crazy magic crap that goes on around them on a frighteningly regular basis. And Lord is he paranoid tonight, like I've ever been that careless.

Of course, that is his job. Containment, I mean. Keeping the unknowing masses ignorant of the realities of the crazy universe around them. They tend if get worked up if they catch even a hint that the world is not exactly like they expect it to be. And since I want to avoid the pitch fork wielding mobs as much as any other Other, I‘m pretty darn careful not to disabuse them of those notions. Other, that's what they’re called- what we're called. Anyone with even a touch of the Other gets the label. Humanity just loves cataloging shit into ‘us’ and ‘them‘, and that’s not counting the subcategories like the Touched, the Untouched, the Undead (that would be me), and the Undying. That would the label attached to the pretty boys I had the displeasure of tangling with tonight, and same ones whose remains the cleaners are currently taking care of along with anything else that came from Underhill along with them. They are among the many races and species that exist between the cracks of this world and the multitude of other ones. It's a whole fucking rainbow coalition out there.

"Slim to none." I reply as I gesture at the obvious answer around us, a casual flick of my wrist to underline my point. "Look at this place. We picked it because we knew it would be empty at this time of night, and that plus the Veil means unless they were Touched no one saw nothing." Touched, that would be us or anyone else who the supernatural got up close and personal with, because that sort of contact always leaves a stain.

"Anything." Adain corrects me automatically. Dude, sometimes he is so like a mother. Or a fourth grade English teacher. I think. It’s not like I can remember either one.

"Anything. Whatever." While we are having our little con-fab the team he brought with him is doing the busy worker bee thing all around us. It's going to take them a while but by the time they're done this place will look like tonight’s dance never happened. Well, except whoever left their car here when they went out would be filing a report with the Englewood, Colorado P.D. tomorrow morning. The Agency's budget doesn't include money for replacing cars that get destroyed as collateral damage. Which would be why I'm not supposed to throw them at people. Go figure.

"What about the bodies?" I ask as I see two of the cleaners in their white jumpsuits and face masks loading what’s left of the boys into body bags."Are they going to be returned to the Court?" The Winter Court’s one of the two governing bodies in Underhill, the less nice of the two, though to be honest, both Courts tend to run more like the crime families of New York and less like any sort of actual government.

"Of course." Adain replies with a hint of satisfaction. "It would be rude to deny the Winter Court an opportunity to tend to their dead." Yeah, cause the Undying just loved that shit.

"They’re going to be pissed." That’s the understatement of the millennium. See I can do subtle.

"Good. Maybe it will keep them from trying to kill one of our assets next time they decide to make an appearance." Wow, he’s pissed. Adain, I never knew you cared that much. If I had a heartbeat I was willing to bet it might have skipped one at that.


End file.
